halabar wrote:Perhaps the biggest mistake that Blizz made along the way was to say "Max level is where the real game begins", and then to design content to reinforce that,

The problem with this is you spend six hours being level 84. You spend six months being level 85. Numbers are illustrative only, but you get the point. Leveling up is something you do once per character, but max level stuff is content you do over and over and over and over again.

Unless they completely change game mechanics to, like, FF5 Job System where leveling *is* content, I don't see how they can do anything different.

Well, "back in the day.." on my hunter, I distinctly remember the corpse-run from the space-goat starting area to the BE starting zone to tame the cat there. I also remember the detailed research and camping to tame specific pets to learn new abilities. Pride and accomplishment in that.

Now? There's nothing in the leveling process that's memorable.

Point is that when only the end game is relevant, and each section of that is only relevant for 4-5 months, and the previous section's grinds are rendered moot, it's just a lot easier for people to burn out and quit, and there's not much there now to bring them back.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Well, "back in the day.." on my hunter, I distinctly remember the corpse-run from the space-goat starting area to the BE starting zone to tame the cat there. I also remember the detailed research and camping to tame specific pets to learn new abilities. Pride and accomplishment in that.

Now? There's nothing in the leveling process that's memorable.

I think that's a silly claim to make. They put a lot more effort nowadays in little things along the way. Even if it's something sily like "Wild Mountain Goat bleats at Darielle" or that Yak mob in Dread Wastes that drops a 3-use mounty item, to rares or the Whale Shark etc. The story arcs do work better together and have their own cookies or breadcrumbs all over the place.

However, I would consider a "gamer" to be someone who did more than casual gaming - I would classify that as a different category, and with a known overlap (meaning the study could still be good).

I don't see how you could nowadays, since casual games are a huge, huge component of gaming and game development in general, and how gaming as a whole has evolved and become more mainstream.

Nooska wrote:Well if there are more explayers than players, and subscriptions are at 8.3 million, there has to have been at least 16.6 million players over the course of time.And my second part is actually what you are saying - the total number of active players would remain the same, so when we have had a peak of ~12 million (iirc), the total number should be higher, unless no new players replaced leaving players since the peak, and the current 8.3 all played during the peak.

Blizzard have sold around 12m boxed copies of classic WoW and in most Asian markets they don't need to buy WoW to play it. With that in mind, there are almost certainly more ex-players than current.

I think there is a very real possibility that subscriber numbers will be down to around 5m this time next year especially if a new expansion is a year off, in which case F2P is probably inevitable. Blizzard have too much pride to just watch their baby become increasingly irrelevant and the higher ups will be on their case to turn this around.

Nooska wrote:Well if there are more explayers than players, and subscriptions are at 8.3 million, there has to have been at least 16.6 million players over the course of time.And my second part is actually what you are saying - the total number of active players would remain the same, so when we have had a peak of ~12 million (iirc), the total number should be higher, unless no new players replaced leaving players since the peak, and the current 8.3 all played during the peak.

Blizzard have sold around 12m boxed copies of classic WoW and in most Asian markets they don't need to buy WoW to play it. With that in mind, there are almost certainly more ex-players than current.

I think there is a very real possibility that subscriber numbers will be down to around 5m this time next year especially if a new expansion is a year off, in which case F2P is probably inevitable. Blizzard have too much pride to just watch their baby become increasingly irrelevant and the higher ups will be on their case to turn this around.

I'd wager that we have a new expac by this time next year. Announcement at Blizzcon, Beta in February, Launch in June. Maybe even faster.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Before we had a release date and everyone was speculating, most people (at least in my guild and on my server) thought that MOP would come out early summer because "they're not going to make us raid an 8 boss dungeon for much longer than 6 months and they said they wanted to get expansions out quicker".

I will be very surprised if a new expansion comes out before September next year.

Darielle wrote:If we have a year of Siege of Orgrimmar, I will lol so hard.

hm, i don't expect it to be a much shorter period of time than this.

Throne was released in March, which is 6 month ago and i guess SoO will be out in 1-2 month. So we have 8 Month and not all (non)heroic guilds have reached their prefered goals. The last Raid allways had to last a bit longer so 10-12 month are reasonalbe, if we like it or not. At least there will be plenty of time to farm achievements or go out

It's possible that when WoW will be on actual decline (dropping to 1-2 million subs) they will finally announce Titan.

I don't really see a company host 2 MMO's at same time: that'd be just making competition with itself.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Nooska wrote:No way Wow would go F2P with 5 million subs still. Hnestly I don't think wow will ever go F2P, it will be shut down instead (and then not till after they have something new lined up).

Nope. They won't shut it down and they won't sit back and let such a decline happen.

Subscription costs have stayed the same in the west ever since launch but server and personnel costs are significantly less than they were at launch so they don't need to be charging $15 a month anymore. They almost certainly have a F2P business model drawn up already and they won't let the Warcraft brand become a joke.

Worldie wrote:It's possible that when WoW will be on actual decline (dropping to 1-2 million subs) they will finally announce Titan.

I don't really see a company host 2 MMO's at same time: that'd be just making competition with itself.

Because I like making bold predictions: WoW will still be online 10, maybe even 20 years from now. Blizzard don't let their games die.

Would be interesting to see what lore they can invent to keep the game going for 5+ more expansions though.

Nevertheless, I'll likely keep playing it until they shut it down.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Worldie wrote:Would be interesting to see what lore they can invent to keep the game going for 5+ more expansions though.

Nevertheless, I'll likely keep playing it until they shut it down.

I don't see why they can't just completely make stuff up that goes off on a massive tangent from what is considered to be the canon. Some people think that has already happened anyway.

The people who are into the underpinning lore of WoW might cry foul for a month or two, but I doubt if the majority of players would bother as long as the game play was unaffected and the story was reasonably strong.

Worldie wrote:Would be interesting to see what lore they can invent to keep the game going for 5+ more expansions though.

Nevertheless, I'll likely keep playing it until they shut it down.

WoW will still be online loooooong after they stop making expansions for it.

Eventually servers will merge and updates will be limited to just balance patches but WoW is going nowhere.

Well, who would be playing? Sure, keeping the servers up is fine, but... what's left to do? Is WoW strong enough for PVP that the PVPers would stay? The raiding community would mostly leave. Even the achievement hunters will be done eventually.

Perhaps the combined mega server will be filled with PVPers and RPers. O.o

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

halabar wrote:Unless Titan isn't a true MMO, then WoW is almost certain to go F2P before Titan, as Blizz releasing a F2P new MMO would surely kill off the subscription one.

Question is, what model are they going to go for with Titan? and what demographics are they going to chase? The market is crowded, so I'm wondering how they are going to try to stand out.

I think they will use WoW as a real world testing ground for F2P models to coincide with the next expansion.

If they do F2P right, 10m people will be playing WoW instead of 5m.

halabar wrote:Well, who would be playing? Sure, keeping the servers up is fine, but... what's left to do? Is WoW strong enough for PVP that the PVPers would stay? The raiding community would mostly leave. Even the achievement hunters will be done eventually.

Perhaps the combined mega server will be filled with PVPers and RPers. O.o

I think that many people will keep WoW installed and just dip in and out. Very few are able to exhaust everything there is to do in WoW and a lot of us have attachment to our main character.

I think you are seriously overvaluing the f2p models business worth. Blizzard is a company first and foremost, and they will choose what is the most profitable way to go about it, and as long as several million people are willing to pay 15$ a month (its not really that much in europe, even on a monthly payment), thats more money than they can probably earn on an f2p model unless they were to give up the "pay 2 win = bad" idea, which I just don't see happen.

They need to make money off WoW to pay for producing Titan, and going F2P with the next expansion seems a lot more like wishful thinking than actual realistic analysis (or even realistic guesses)

Right now its 8.3 million players, it will drop some before next expansion comes around, for sure, and then it will rise when the next expansion hits, like it usually does, but thinking F2P is anywhere in the immediate future is, in my opinion, ludicrous, or pure wishful thinking (if you actually wish for it to go F2P - F2P is the first sign I'm not playing it in general, and I know I'm not the only one that thinks that way).

Also, having 5 million paying customers is still a whole lot more than the nearest competitor, and is a lot better than 10 million freeloaders occasionally paying for something in a microtransaction.

Lieris wrote:I think that many people will keep WoW installed and just dip in and out. Very few are able to exhaust everything there is to do in WoW and a lot of us have attachment to our main character.

Lieris wrote:I think that many people will keep WoW installed and just dip in and out. Very few are able to exhaust everything there is to do in WoW and a lot of us have attachment to our main character.

^- true story

well, and if new content basically doesn't come... there goes all that 'not fun' stuff like pressure to progress. Folks may start having fun again.

not after the 'raid or die' folks leave (talkin 10/20/whatever years from now, just before the servers go dark...), and you can't tell me with a straight face that there isn't more to do in the game than there was in DS and the ICC days.